Declared Dead
by pesky.lil.critter
Summary: One-shot. "Nineteen-year-old Wendy Jansen has been declared dead a year after her disappearance and the brutal murders of her parents and five younger sisters. No bodies were ever recovered." They found her before the fuckers killed her.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Set sometime during Season One, after Bloody Mary. This make them 22 and 26. My OFC has only just turned twenty, not that anyone's noticed, seeing as she was being tortured by demons at the time.

I wrote this because I couldn't stop wondering about what would drive me to become a hunter. I'm totally not the sort of person who'd go off hunting demons even if they killed someone I love. It was extremely difficult to imagine me with a gun in my hands that does something more than squirt water. (Although those could be useful for the Winchesters, provided the water was holy water.)

Anyway, enjoy the ride...

* * *

**WARNINGS**: torture (off-stage, non-graphic description), character death (off stage), brief nakedness

* * *

They get her out before the fuckers kill her. Not that there's any hurry if that's the deadline (pardon the pun), seeing as they were being very careful not to break their new toy beyond repair.

Because she doesn't have anyone left and when they find her they're three states away from her home, and besides, she's been declared dead, she gets to travel with them for a while.

Much, _much_ later she'll think she was really fucking lucky to have known them, but for the first few days she hates them. Hates them for not getting her out quicker, hates them for not saving her family, hates them for not letting her die. Hates them for not having gone through the same torture.

After the first week she calms a little and, selfish as it sounds, when she sees the way they torture themselves, she feels a hell of a lot better.

The first time she witnesses one of Sam's nightmares they've been on the road for five days. Dean's driving and she and Sam both doze off after a few hours. She's not completely out, just listening to the music and the steady rumble of the car and the way Dean sometimes mumbles things to himself, and when Sam kind of whimpers in his sleep and sobs a name, it doesn't really register.

Then Dean says "Fuck," and suddenly she's a lot more awake.

"Sam? Come one, man, wake up. Sammy, come on!" His voice grows louder by the second but Sam doesn't react so she leans forward and pinches Sam's shoulder, _hard_, and then sits back feeling smug and satisfied at the loud (and most definitely awake) yelp from Sam.

She grins at Dean in the rearview mirror and knows it's ugly and doesn't care. "Nice to know I'm not the only one with bad dreams. So, what's your story, Sammy?"

The look Sam shoots her is withering and her grin widens, lips stretching over teeth. "Oh, come on. You've seen mine, all up close and personal. Why not show me yours?"

He keeps the glare up for a moment, then he nods, ignoring the way his brother's looking at him. He turns in his seat to look out the window. "Alright, fine. My girlfriend, Jessica, was killed the same way my mom was. Pinned to the ceiling, bleeding, and then going up in flames. And I saw everything."

She nods. Considers her next words for a long time. Nods again. Isn't surprised to find that two hours have gone by. "When you found me, they'd just gotten started with the day's program." The tiny ever-observant part of her not occupied with the memories and the emotions that come with them, that part notices the horror on their faces. "They'd done something to heal me up, but only about halfway because it hurts worse, reopening a wound, than making a new one. The Goons were wearing mom and dad, and the leader was wearing Kate that day. I hadn't seen her until then, and I guess I was sort of hoping she'd gotten away. It came in acting like it was her. And it was doing pretty good until it told the Goons to take off the bindings and they obeyed. That was kind of a dead give-away. I mean, what demon, no matter how dumb, would follow the orders of a six-year-old human child? I have no idea how much time passed until you guys showed up. It made me fight them. It made me hurt them so they wouldn't hurt me. As long as I don't sleep, not thinking about it works. Not thinking about hurting them, about seeing them die, about how fucking long it's been since I last saw them alive." She blinks, comes back to the present. Tries to ignore the familiar screams in her head. Dean's face, what she can see, since he's determinedly staring out the windshield and she's in the back seat, is expressionless, but his grip on the steering wheel is turning his knuckles as white as his face. Beside him, Sam is turned around in his seat, staring at her and very obviously horrified.

"What do your mean, they'd only just gotten started?"

She stares right back at him, raises an eyebrow when she realizes he's expecting an answer, fills her voice with the blistering sarcasm she can muster. "Sammy, they learned how to torture someone in fucking _hell_. They spent a couple _centuries_ down there, each of them, torturing, getting tortured. They know all the tricks. Believe me, what you saw wasn't the worst of it. Not nearly."

"Dean, pull over." Sam's voice is calm.

Dean starts, glances at Sam, pulls over. When the car comes to a stop, Sam finally looks away from her and bolts out the car so fast he gets tangled in the seatbelt.

She watches him through the closed window as he beds over and starts retching. He's not eaten a whole lot today so his stomach is empty pretty quickly and he spends a minute or so dry-heaving. Then he wipes his mouth on the tissue she hands him and rinses his mouth with the bottle of water she keeps within reach at all times.

They don't speak again until they say goodnight at the motel that evening.

* * *

She falls asleep immediately, and when Dean comes into her room to wake her, she is well rested and if she dreamed she retains no memory. There _are_ perks to travelling with the Winchesters, and she enjoys that, but it doesn't make her like them any more.

The way Dean stares, open-mouthed, when he walk in on her naked except for her socks, now that's a damn good reason to like him.

He wasn't, she thinks, at all put off by the scars and the healing wounds. She could get used to that.

* * *

She has been travelling with Sam and Dean for three weeks now, salting her own doors and windows for two and just a few days ago she dug up her first corps to salt and burn. The salt annoys her so she decides to test some theories.

They stay in a tiny town somewhere in Colorado for longer than planned because the job turns out not to be as simple as they'd thought, so when one of the waitresses at the local diner calls on sick because of a broken leg, while the other one is on maternity leave, she offers to help out for a while. The owner and the cook are more grateful than she thinks is reasonable, but she doesn't mind the extra cash and so as she's friendly and smiles a lot he locals tip pretty well.

She buys the cheapest hardcover notebook she can find, because the tattered old thing Dean's always carrying around has been pretty useful. She also gets some climbing rope with a core of rubber tubing and a lot of salt, and spends her first day off cutting the rope into pieces about a yard and a half long and stuffing them full of salt. From then on she uses the salt-rope to cover the doors and windows.

At some point she starts carrying a length of rope around with her wherever she goes. When the make-shift whip proves effective in warding off a nasty spirit a few weeks later, Sam and Dean make their own salt-rope.

When she mentions finding a way to braid iron into the rope, the brothers share a long look, grin at her and start working out the logistics. Two weeks later there is a new note written beneath the first draft of the iron-rope.

It says SUCCESS! thickly underlined. Years later she will realize that the date scrawled beside the word was her twenty-first birthday. It also marks the first anniversary of the day she met Sam and Dean.

* * *

**AN:** Currently a one-shot. I may change my mind about that later, provided I get the inspiration.

Reviews would definitely encourage that.

Love, Annabeth


	2. Chapter 2

**Declared Dead**

It's a great deal more accurate to say that the job found them than the other way round.

They leave Toledo, Ohio in a bit of a hurry after they drop Charlie off at her house, because the cops Dean knocked out in front of the antique shop start looking for them the moment they wake up.

They find a lead on Dad which sends them racing to Florida, only to go cold halfway. They drift somewhat aimlessly through North Carolina, half-heartedly keeping an eye out for a new job.

Dean's birthday dawns grey and rainy, and Dean wakes with a mood to match. Sam, on the other hand is more cheerful than he's been for weeks, and unlike the last time which was the result of sleep deprivation, this actually seems genuine. He sits across Dean at breakfast, reading the paper and chattering and ignoring his food. Well, you can't have everything.

The pancakes drowning in syrup and the large glass of milk as well as the pretty waitress' smile do a lot to improve his mood, and after a large cup of coffee he's even awake.

Dean sips his second cup and pretends not to stare at the waitress, until Sam shoves the local newspaper at him saying, "Hey, Dean, check this out! No idea if it's our kind of thing or just some human going crazy, but it's probably worth looking into."

Dean looks down at a page three article about the murders of a family of locals.

Missing Girl Declared Dead

_Nineteen-year-old Wendy Jansen has been missing since the murders of her parents, William (40) and Theresa (39), and five younger sisters, Katherina (17) , Elizabeth and Helena (twins, 16), Martha (14) and Barbara (8), nearly a year ago. Yesterday, her case was officially closed and she was declared dead. Her boyfriend Jason is very disappointed in the police. "I'm certain she's still alive. And I won't believe she's dead until I see her body. The police could find her, if they'd just look harder."_

Dean skims over the rest. No bodies were ever recovered, but the amount of blood and… other bits found at the crime scene, which was the family's home, made survival impossible for everyone but Wendy. There were plenty of fingerprints not belonging to any of the Jansens, but every single one of them belonged to a friend of the family, and all of _them_ had alibis. There was no sign of forced entry and nothing (except for the family itself) was missing. According to the article there is no reason for anybody to want _any_ of the Jansens dead.

Dean sips at his coffee and snorts. There's always some reason. There's always someone _with_ a reason.

"Well, Sammy. Guess we got ourselves a job." They grin at each other.

* * *

Getting into the crime scene is easy. They don't even have to lie to anyone about why they're there because there isn't anyone around to question them.

The place has been cleaned but the edges of large pools of blood were clearly visible, even nearly a year later. Other than that, the house has obviously been left as the former occupants left it.

There are pictures all over the place. After the blood, it's the first thing Dean notices.

The parents make a nice-looking couple, he thinks with a glance at their wedding photo. Both dark-haired and dark-eyed, he pale, she darker, about the same height. Most pictures show them smiling, laughing, happy.

The oldest by nearly three years, according to Sam's research, Wendy Jansen still looks oddly small, young, surrounded by her family. She's short, pale skin, long dark hair, facial features obviously inherited from her mother, but her eyes are very light, blue or grey.

The second child has the mother's coloring and her father's face and build, though her hair is a sun-bleached nearly-blond.

The two middle children, twins, are both brunette and the shade of their skin is neither the father's almost white, nor the mother's honey, but somewhere in-between. A close-up of the two shows that their eyes are green, with flecks of dark brown.

The fifth child looks like a much younger version of her mother, complete with a slight curl to her hair, which has bypassed her older sisters.

The youngest has short dark hair, curling in tight corkscrews, skin like the twins, eyes like her mother, but her features don't resemble her sisters or her parents. Dean finds a photo of a woman he thinks is Theresa Jansen's mother, whose face very much resembles little Barbara.

Dean stops studying the photos as a sickeningly familiar smell hits his nose. He follows it to the parents' bedroom, and finds that the whole bed reeks of sulfur. "Shit."

"Dean! I think I've found something!" Sam calls from upstairs.

"Yeah, me too! I'll be right there!" He quickly checks the other ground floor rooms. Kitchen, bathroom, dining room (which has the biggest table he's ever seen outside of a movie or restaurant), living room. And comes up with nothing. No sulfur, no EMF, nothing except the damn blood everywhere.

He finds Sam in the room at the end of the hallway. It says 'Wendy's room' on the door and when he walks inside he has to stop for a moment because there are only books where the walls should be.

Bookshelves cover the walls of the room completely, leaving only the door and windows. Beneath one window is a chest of drawers, beneath the other a desk, which is where Sam is sitting, hunched over something in his hands.

Dean spends some time looking around for a bed until he sees the hammock, which has been pulled up so that it nearly hugs the ceiling.

Sam looks up when the door opens and motions Dean closer. "Found the girl's diary. It was wedged between a thesaurus and an encyclopedia. No wonder the cops missed it. Anyway, seems pretty normal. You know, college, her boyfriend, work, her family. Up until about a week before the murders, when the parents start acting strange. Most of the time they'd be completely normal and then they'd say or do something totally out of character. It scared her. Got worse when her sisters started acting weird, too. The last entry is dated the day before the murders. Dean, she was terrified."

"Yeah, well, she had plenty of reason. The parents' bed _reeks_ of sulfur. I don't know what went down here, but it sure as fuck ain't good." He doesn't say 'And we should stay the hell away,' because he figures Sam already knows that and they _both_ know that they're not going to heed such good advice.

* * *

They snoop around a little more and just keep coming up with nothing, so they put the tiny town of Oak Ridge, North Carolina in their rearview mirror and get to work finding whatever demon killed the Jansens.

It's not easy and they run into quite a few dead ends before they finally call Bobby Singer. Bobby's kind of annoyed they waited this long to contact him, but helps them willingly enough.

They have to interrupt their search when Sam's friend Rebecca asks for help, so it's nearing the end of February when they finally manage to track the bastard down somewhere near the border between Missouri and Kansas.

Only, it's not just one. In fact, there's at least three of them and they're keeping the girl around as some kind of plaything.

They get her out before the fuckers kill her and they even manage to exorcise all three. The girl's in pretty bad shape so the first thing they do is take her to the motel to treat her wounds. No way are they going to a hospital with an injured missing girl after the fiasco in St. Louis last month. While she sleeps, they gather the bodies of William, Theresa and Barbara Jansen, build a funeral pyre and salt and burn them. They try to find the other four girls, but their bodies either got left behind somewhere between here and North Carolina, or they're still possessed and got away. Once the girl is well enough to walk to the diner and back and stay awake afterwards, they pack up and leave town.

For a while, she's pretty out of it. Dean kind of figures she's entitled and doesn't push it, and besides, he isn't so sure he wants to know what she has to say anyway. He doesn't think he wants to know exactly how she got the cuts he put stitches on, or the oddly placed bruises, or why she's kind of careful with her left wrist. What he does want to know, is why they chose _this_ family.

* * *

Wendy sits quietly in the backseat for the most part. So quietly, in fact, that Dean sometimes forgets she's even there.

She becomes a little harder to forget after she makes Sam throw up with her torture story. Seeing her naked (almost naked, but socks barely count) doesn't help.

Dean can't quite understand why she affects him at all. It's not like she's a looker, even without the pink scars and the healing wounds and the rainbow of bruises. The most conventionally attractive part of her is her hair. Long, thick, dark, glossy hair that she usually wears in a braid down her back.

The top of her head barely reaches his shoulder and her hips are unusually wide for a girl of twenty and her legs are so short she actually has to run to keep up with Sam at normal walking speed. She dresses in loose cotton pants and t-shirts, and a jacket with so many pockets Dean has given up trying to count them. She never wears make-up or skirts or high-heels. She does wear huge glasses with black plastic frames and she smokes and she's a vegetarian on principle.

Wendy is so far away from Dean's type it's not even funny. A part of him resents her for being attractive anyway.

* * *

She kind of sticks around.

It begins to dawn on him during the scarecrow-slash-pagan-god thing, but he doesn't realize how integral to their little team she has become until dad shows up and completely upsets the balance.

After they've dealt with the vampires (and boy was that ever a surprise) there's a huge fight about dad's approach to parenting and Sam running off to college and Dean's apparent inability to disobey dad's orders even when they make no sense. Also, dad has a problem with Wendy.

She doesn't seem to mind even when dad demands they "dump this kid you idiots have picked up" in some town with a bit of cash. Dean objects, loudly, the first time he speaks in this fight without the intent of running interference between Sam and dad. The two of them wear identical expressions of surprise, which Dean wisely doesn't mention, although dad is significantly less happy. Dad takes a deep breath and straightens his stance and is very obviously getting ready to lay into Dean, when Wendy gets between them.

Short, young Wendy, who likes to fight with salt-rope and holy-water-squirt-guns, and whose best move in hand-to-hand is dodging.

Wendy, who spent the better part of a year as a demon plaything.

"Don't you talk to my boys like that, sir. I ain't going anywhere until they ask me to." She stares him down for a long moment. Then she pulls out a little squirt gun and starts playing with it. Dad tenses at the move and looks kind of stumped when she pulls out a toy instead of a weapon. "I know a thing or two about demons, John. Spent some quality time with a few of them. And I'll tell you a little secret. Something I haven't told anyone else. Dean and Sam got me out before the bastards got tired or me. But not before they took something from me. Something every bit as precious as your wife." She hands him a picture of some kind. It's black and grey and Dean can't find anything recognizable on it. "You know what that is?" Dad nods, still staring at the picture. "That was taken about two weeks before Spring Break of '05. I was three months along when they – took me. I miscarried sometime around the sixth month, I think. I wanted to die. But they did something to me, so that I barely even bled. Jason doesn't even know he had a daughter." She takes back the picture. "So, you see, I've got a fuckton of reasons to hate demons." Wendy grins, a baring of teeth more than a smile, and Dean thinks blood wouldn't look out of place on a face like that, as she leans toward dad. "And I know what your old friend Azazel is planning."

For some reason, this is the thing that tips the scales in her favor in dad's eyes.

* * *

Frustratingly, she doesn't tell them what kind of plans Azazel has. Or at least she doesn't tell Sam and Dean. She and dad spend enough time quietly arguing that Dean thinks they might share secrets he and Sam will never get to hear.

Unlike dad though, Wendy doesn't pretend. She openly says that she's keeping secrets, and that's the only reason Dean doesn't push it. Even if he'd like to know why.

Dad does tell them about the signs and that they've been cropping up in Salvation, Iowa, so they take off as quickly as they can.

They have to stop for the night, and because it's most convenient, and the weather is fine, they simply camp. Wendy produces marshmallows from somewhere, so they sit around the fire and nearly burn their tongues with melting-hot marshmallows. Dad kind of grumbles about wasting time, but Wendy and Dean team up and insist that they're not going to make it to Salvation before noon tomorrow anyway, and they all need some proper rest, and that includes relaxing a bit, and eventually he shuts up.

At some point, sitting beside Wendy while Sam gets ready for bed and dad checks all his weapons, one after the other, Dean asks, "Why do you call dad by his first name?"

"Well, I can't very well call him dad, can I?" she replies very dryly. "Let me demonstrate."

She gets up and walks to the cooler, finishes her beer and takes out four fresh bottles. Dean watches her, waits.

"Hey, Winchester," she says, loudly enough that everyone hears.

"Yes?" answers Dean, only to hear two more voices saying the same thing.

Wendy grins at him, carefree and amused, tosses each Winchester a bottle and settles back down next to Dean. "That's why I call him John."

Dean snorts, clinks their bottles together and tries to ignore the part of him that thinks she's pretty when she's happy, the part that wants to make her smile like that more often.

* * *

When Dean gets sick in April, they change their sleeping arrangements.

Wendy stops getting a separate room, which earns them some odd looks until Wendy and Sam pose as a couple of college kids on a road trip with Sam's older brother along as chaperone. It makes Wendy want to laugh, but she doesn't because she knows it'll sound hysterical, and if she starts, she isn't sure she can stop.

The reality is very different, of course. Wendy and Sam are both scared out of their wits that Dean will drop dead or something if they let him out of their sight even for a second. (Seriously, bathroom breaks have become really uncomfortable. And Dean's already freaked enough without the constant watching-you-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye-thing the two of them have got going.) They have even begun to sleep in shifts so one of them is always around to keep an eye on him.

For some reason, Wendy no longer sleeps unless she's touching Dean in some way. When he was still in the hospital, she'd sit in the chair beside his bed, hold on to one of his hands, and she'd be asleep in minutes. Now, she sleeps in his bed.

They don't discuss it, even after he's healed, and they don't change it either. Dean tries very hard never to think of the way Wendy looked when she realized Dean was dying, like her only lifeline was being cut before her eyes. Like her sanity depended on him.

* * *

She's been half out of her mind ever since John Winchester showed his face again. It's not that he scares her, but she and Dean avoid sharing a bed when he's around.

Since John showed up, Wendy goes to sleep every night thinking 'What if Dean's gone when I wake up?' and 'Oh God, please let me not dream tonight.' But Dean seems to be aware of her fears, because he's always in the room, in sight when the nightmares lose their hold on her.

Other than the less-than-ideal sleeping arrangements, the silences are the worst thing about John's presence. She and Dean and Sam have shared some silences, but John takes 'speaking silence' to a whole new level. To escape the oppressiveness, she spends a lot of time outside these days, freezing her ass off as she smokes one cigarette after another. Occasionally, when Sam and John get into a shouting match, Dean will join her. When she offers him a cigarette and a lighter, he doesn't refuse, even though it makes him cough up a lung each time.

She asks Dean at some point, half-kidding, to teach her to fight. He gives her a long hard look, shrugs and says "Sure, why not." Practicing with him, and sometimes Sam, she learns how to fight a larger and stronger opponent, and sometimes even win, although she suspects that's only because they let her.

For some reason, once it becomes obvious that Wendy really isn't going anywhere, John takes it upon himself to teach her how to use and take care of a gun. After a few sessions, she can even manage to hit the target.

She doesn't tell them, any of them, everything she knows, and she does know quite a bit. Some demons get chatty when they're sure their victim is going to die before he or she ever has the chance to spill any secrets.

With John it's a very deliberate, calculated move, because he has information she wants and the other way round. If she tells him what she knows, she's not going to get anything back, so they've set up a sort of trade agreement.

It's at the same time simpler and more complex with Dean and Sam. She wants to protect them. They're both older than she is, and their knowledge about this world is a great deal more extensive, but she's a big sister and a mother, and her instinct is to protect the innocent. And where demons are concerned, Dean and Sam _are_ mostly innocent.

'Mary Winchester wanted to protect them too. Will you throw yourself into the fire for them?' Alanna's voice whispers in the back of her mind.

"Fuck off," she whispers back. "Mary had no idea what she was dealing with. If I have to burn to make them safe, I will."

Alanna laughs and throws her words like poison darts, but Wendy pulls remembered pain around her like a cloak, and has to laugh. Using her own personal hell to ward off the memory of a demon. Now, that's irony.

Huddled inside her cloak of pain, she turns her attention back to the memories and emotions her thoughts touched on before Alanna intruded.

She drifts off to the sound of Dean talking quietly to John and the memory of her daughter moving in her belly. The dream she has as a consequence, shouldn't have been so surprising.

* * *

When Sam and Dean run into their dad in Chicago, Wendy isn't with them for the first time in nearly three months. She argued and she complained, hell, she begged. But for once the Winchesters and the doctors are in perfect agreement. It's stupid to be walking around with your leg broken in two places. Not that this makes it any easier to stay behind. Or to leave her.

When they come back, bruised and battered, Wendy gets an intern to patch them up. The girl is sworn to secrecy by Wendy, whispering some kind of secret girl oath, giggling the whole time.

When Dean mentions the girl-ritual a few weeks later at breakfast, she gives him the strangest look and tells him to look up someone called Gertrude Granger. For some reason Sam gives her an even stranger look, almost as if he's never seen her before.

"Don't look at me like that, Sam. I got the first book for my thirteenth birthday and I was a goner the second I realized the hero was a dorky kid with glasses. Once we had internet at home it wasn't such a large step from Harry to Danger. Besides, how on earth did you recognize her?"

Sam rubs the back of his neck, like he's embarrassed. "Ah, well. My roommate on college introduced me to the concept. But Bill only wrote for superhero comics. And he thought nothing good could ever come out of Europe, least of all England." He clears his throat. "I was fourteen when I read the first book. At the time I kind of identified with Harry."

Wendy nods, grinning, all teeth and flashing eyes, and for a moment the wish to chase the darkness from her smile is so strong in Dean that it overwhelms everything else. Then he scowls. "Anyone going to let me in on the secret?"

Sam and Wendy share a look that clearly says '_you_ tell him.' After a moment Wendy shifts and Sam grins triumphantly, before returning his attention to his laptop. Wendy downs half a glass of milk in one go, pushes a few massacred bits of pancake around on her plate. Dean begins to wonder if he really wants to know.

"You know Harry Potter?" she asks finally.

"Sounds vaguely familiar. Er, right. Kids' movie, wizard kid going to school in a castle to learn magic. Big evil bad guy keeps coming after him. Really ugly relatives."

She's looking amused now, and Sam is actually snickering. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Both books and movies are pretty popular, but I have to tell you, I'll always be a loyal book fan. Anyway. Many fans aren't just an audience. We sit around talking every little detail to death, speculating on the next book, discussing the what-ifs. And some of us write those ideas down and publish them on the web. It's called fanfiction. And there's one pretty popular author who's writing an alternate version of the original books. It's huge already, and she's only at like, their fourth year."

Sam is nodding now, laughter gone. "Yeah, it's brilliant. I mean, this girl made up one or two characters and changed the whole Potterverse around them. And she's a really talented writer. I'm kind of hoping she'll write an original at some point."

"Absolutely," Wendy says. "Anyway, at some point the whole family swears this oath. They swear in blood, to make it magically binding. It goes like this." She puts both hands on the table, palms up. "'My hand in yours,'" Sam takes one of her hands and puts his other on the table, palm up. They speak the rest together. "'My wand with yours, my life for yours, now and always.'" Sam takes his hands away and hides behind his laptop again. Wendy leaves her hands on the table, and Dean has the fleeting thought that she's waiting for something. "You have to say it three times to make it truly binding. Of course, it's got not power here, but Kristin, the intern that patched you up, is as much a fan as I am, and she's going keep whatever promises she made while under that oath. As would I."

"Me too."

This time, then Wendy smiles at Sam it's softer. "I know." Nowhere near happy, but not quite so hard-edged.

Well, Dean thinks. Progress is progress.

* * *

While the Winchesters say goodbye, Wendy goes to visit Monika. It's easy to charm her way into the house when she says she's married to Sam's older brother and they're expecting a baby.

The only truth she speaks that afternoon is that little Rosie is one of the cutest babies she's ever seen.

Despite the liters of coffee she drank, and the fact that she spent the afternoon sitting still, she's far more tired than Dean and Sam that evening. They let her sleep in the backseat of the Impala while they wait.

She falls right back into the dream Dean woke her from this morning.

It picks up almost exactly where it left off. Lazy Sunday mornings in bed with Dean, getting up only because Hanna insists on being awake and bouncing around on Wendy's bladder. The wonder on his face when he feels their daughter kick, the way he looks at her, the way he kisses her.

Hanna has his eyes, dark and green, and his smile.

She doesn't even realize until much later that Dean took on the role that should have been Jason's.

Wendy wakes up to Dean shouting and car doors slamming, confused because he usually kisses her awake and her belly is flat, until she comes out of the dream and remembers that the child she carried lives only in her heart, and Dean has never kissed her.

The sight of Dean and Sam hurrying up the front lawn gets her awake real fast and she's out of the car and running after them. She catches them up at the front door, just in time to hear the click as Dean cracks the lock.

She's the one who grabs the child while Sam gets the mother out and Dean takes care of the father. She's halfway down the stairs, when the nursery blows up, and the shockwave makes her miss a step. She turns as she's falling, intent on saving _this_ child, willing to lay down her own life, but she doesn't hit the floor. Dean has somehow made it back inside in time to catch her and drag her and the baby outside.

Wendy aches to comfort the screaming child; her arms feel empty when Monika takes her daughter back.

She wraps her empty arms tightly round herself and watches Dean keep Sam from running back into the fire. She feels cold and tired, and there's a black hole in her chest, made up of pain, numbing her to everything else.

* * *

She has no memory of the ride back to the motel.

In their room, Wendy curls up on the bed, without even taking off her shoes or jacket, and remembers. She doesn't even realize they're waiting for something until Dean's phone rings.

The horrified look on Dean's face saps her of all her strength, so she opts to stay at Bobby's while her boys go rescue their father.

Sam calls her the next day from the hospital. She drops on her ass, spends five minutes trying not to hyperventilate, and then flies into a frenzy trying to get there _right this fucking second._ She borrows a car from Bobby and doesn't stop until she's at the hospital. The only reason she takes care not to break any traffic laws once she passes town limits, is that she isn't willing to waste time talking a cop into turning a blind eye.

* * *

She spends all her time at Dean's side, wondering if that's really him she feels or just wishful thinking.

The only time she leaves him is when John asks to talk to her. He just looks at her for a long time, then kind of nods to himself and asks her to pick up some stuff for him, hands her a list.

She doesn't tell Sam, requests Bobby's help only for those things she doesn't have access to on such short notice.

She helps John set up the summoning ritual. A part of her wants to fell guilty, because she knows what he's planning and she knows she isn't going to stop him. But the part of her that wants to feel guilty belongs to the past. It belongs to a girl who didn't believe in demons and who thought ghosts made for good fiction. It belongs to a girl, not a woman, not a mother, not the person Wendy has become. It belongs to a dead girl.

Azazel ignores her. It's almost insulting, the way she doesn't even register for him. But at least that gives her the opportunity to quietly shove the two black-eyed doctors into a pair of devil's traps she had the good foresight to paint on the floor.

She sticks to the background until John and Azazel get ready to seal the deal (which is really fucking crappy, by the way, but worth Dean's life) before throwing her two cents in.

"Wait a second, boys," she says because she wants them both off-balance. She doesn't wait to see if it works. "I've got some questions first. So, ole yellow-eyes, you sure you want a guy like John in the pit? I mean, I can imagine what kind of an avalanche he could kick loose down there. You willing to risk it?"

He puts on an extremely thoughtful look. Wendy's heart sinks. "Yes, I think I'll risk it."

She shrugs, still trying to remain aloof. "Fine. Second question's for you, John. Just what do you think you'll accomplish by not telling Dean and Sam anything?"

His face twists. "What's it to you, girl?"

She nods. "Fine," she says again. "Just one more thing," she says to Azazel. "What the fuck did Alanna do to me?"

The yellow eyes focus on her in a way that makes her think of x-rays and an evil version of Albus Dumbledore. "Well, well. She always was creative," he mutters, mostly to himself. Then his eyes flick up to hers. "She made the fetus dissolve. Took it apart on a molecular level." He shrugs. "Of course, she also bound the soul. You'll carry an extra soul around with you until the next time you get pregnant."

The black hole is back, and this time it takes away the pain too.

"Well, I'll leave you to it then. And hurry, won't you? Dean's running out of time."

Two minutes later, while Dean's waking up in his hospital bed and John's hurrying upstairs to check on him, Wendy is sitting in the Impala, heaving deep breaths, and not crying. She stays there until she can breathe normally again, then she very deliberately removes the ultra-sound picture from her pocket and leaves it in the glove compartment.

* * *

She's there when John says goodbye to his sons, distracts them when he leaves the room under the pretense of getting some coffee. Sam goes to check on him after a while, leaving Wendy to catch Dean up on what's been happening. She leaves out last night.

Down the hall, Sam starts screaming for help.

* * *

A few days later she watches them build a funeral pyre. Doesn't offer to help, because he wasn't her father, and she didn't know him. Understanding isn't the same as knowing.

She sits on the ground beside the borrowed car, feeling small and peaceful, wrapped in her coat and the voices of her boys.

"No. Nothing," Dean says, and she can hear the tears in his voice, tears he'll never spill, because he's too proud and too stubborn. She can also hear the sincerity, and finds in herself nothing but relief because she knows what John wanted to say to him. He didn't, stopped by the hard glare she fixed him with, and maybe something else too.

She comes with them to Harvelle's Roadhouse and sticks around because there's no way she prepared to deal with homicidal clowns right now, and she and Ellen hit it off after everybody puts their guns away.

Wendy feels awkward around Jo, whose childhood is not yet over, who is so very obviously younger at heart than any of them, for all that Dean sometimes acts like an over-grown five-year-old (occasionally he can manage fifteen instead, which isn't much better and makes Wendy think things like 'the difference between men and boys…') But, unlike Dean, Jo really is that young, that innocent and wide-eyed.

The first night Dean and Sam are gone, she hides in the tiny spare room and reads.

The second night, she gets roaring drunk for the first time in her entire life. According to Jo, she's a very happy drunk. "And you really need to get laid. It's kind of obvious you haven't had any for a while, what with the way you were all over poor Chris. And he's gay, too."

That throws her, mostly because she's thinking along the lines of 'I haven't had sex since I got pregnant a year and a half ago.' She spends the rest of her time there thinking about Jason, which is painful on a whole different level than thinking about her – their – daughter or her parents or her sisters. She snaps herself out of it when Dean and Sam come back.

When the opportunity presents itself, she grabs Dean and escapes into the night. She's thinking about lost chances and important words left unsaid.

"You know I helped him," she begins, not looking at him. "And I understand that you hate him and me right now." Dean makes an angry noise and tries to move away. She gives him the same hard glare she gave John not two weeks ago. "But he's your dad. He loves you. You and Sam. He loves you two more than anything in the world. And I think his death was always going to be saving one of you. I helped him because I understand. Because I know how horrifying it is to watch your child die." She wishes she could take his pain away. "Wouldn't you have done the same if it had been Sam?"

His face contorts, and he fucking _radiates_ soul-deep pain, and she reaches out –

He nearly lifts her off her feet with his embrace.

Her brain shuts down the moment he kisses her.

It feels new and unfamiliar, because it's him and because the emotions in his kisses are so very different from Jason. He pulls away, still clutching her arms, both of them breathing hard.

There's a question forming on his lips (they're glistening wet, and a part of her sparks with electricity that she did that), it's obvious, even dazed as she is.

"Don't," she says. "I'm telling you right now to damn well stop beating yourself up, because John died for you. Stop feeling guilty because your father loves you. It's the most natural thing in the world, parents loving their children. And I'm going to let you in on a secret, Dean. You're _worth_ loving."

She loops both arms around his neck and kisses him before he can say anything, because she isn't in the mood to hear his self-loathing crap or his stupid jokes or his bloody transparent lies.

He doesn't lie with his kisses. For once, she wants nothing but truth from him.

This time he really does lift her off her feet when his arms go around her.

When they come up for air he whispers against her lips, "You're worth loving too, Wendy."

And instead of kissing him again, she tears herself away, nearly twists her ankle on the landing. Turns her back on him, walks a few steps, wraps her arms around herself, thinking of impossible dreams and dead parents and dead children and the ugly flatness of her belly. Thinks of terrible truths whispered by forked tongues.

After a long moment she says, "I dream of you, sometimes. Of you and me and our daughter. Except, she was never yours. Sometimes in my nightmares, you're there, too. Right beside me, screaming and fighting and bleeding. Sometimes you hold a scalpel and your eyes are black and you laugh. Sometimes I dream that you never existed, and those are the worst." She curls forward, hears Dean move toward her, completes the move so she's sitting on her heels, precariously balanced. But then, she always is. Always standing on the metaphorical cliff's edge. Always a heartbeat away from finding the nearest crossroads to sell her soul for her daughter's life. She knows Dean is in a similar place, but there's a world of difference between losing a parent and losing a child. (And what if John and Hanna aren't the lost ones? Dean and Wendy are.) Another world between self-sacrifice and murder.

"Come one," she says when the silence finally feels empty. "Let's go back inside."

The looks Sam keeps sending their way say that she saw at least some of what happened. The looks Ellen sends them say the same thing, but she's a great deal more subtle about it.

Sam is trying (and failing miserably) to teach her to play pool when Ash surfaces with something that may once have been a laptop. Wendy thinks it looks rather like a bomb now. Then she thinks that's a pretty accurate analogy for her life these days.

She very carefully avoids looking at Dean.

* * *

Things are off.

Sam knows that _something_ happened between Wendy and Dean when they were at the Roadhouse, but he isn't sure what exactly.

The results, though, are very obvious. It starts out with music so loud Sam can barely hear himself think, and Wendy going through cigarettes at an alarming rate. Something else happens that Sam doesn't notice right away. The two have stopped sharing a bed. Or rather, they sleep on the same bed, but Wendy (and it's always her, never Dean) builds a barrier in the middle of the bed each night before she goes to sleep.

Sometime after their run-in with Gordon Walker and the non-murderous vampires Sam gets a taste of what Dean probably felt like, living with Sam and dad. Whenever Wendy and Dean speak to each other these days, they argue. They fight about small things like which hotel to stay or when to stop for bathroom breaks. They complain and accuse and jab at each other until Sam fears that they'll come to blows, but they leave something left unsaid, something huge and painful.

At some point Wendy storms out after another shouting match, and returns sometime after midnight with a camping mat, a sleeping bag and the location of the grave they've been looking for.

And then, a few shouting matches and one heated whispered conversation later, she does the unthinkable. It never occurred to Sam (or to Dean, he thinks) that it's even a possibility until she packs her bags and leaves.

* * *

She forces herself not to turn around and go back. Forces herself to keep her eyes focused ahead and find a bus that goes at least in the general direction of South Dakota. Bobby's is the best place to go.

She helps him with research while they fix up the car he leant Dean and Sam (and Wendy but she's no longer part of DeanandSamandWendy, it's just DeanandSam now) while the Impala was out of commission.

They paint it a bright sunny yellow, take out the back seats and work on the interior until it's practically a flat on wheels. There's even a secret compartment for weapons and other paraphernalia in one of the back doors, both of which are sealed.

When the car is ready, she leaves.

She doesn't go hunting, not really. She finds jobs, does the research and calls Bobby and Ellen. Then she waits for someone to take care of the monster and leaves, already looking for the next job.

She meets quite a few hunter this way, but she doesn't like to interact with them. Most of them are rough and unfriendly and the ones that aren't are obsessive or fanatic. Besides, they usually treat her like a child or a coward, and she isn't either.

She makes exceptions, occasionally. Mostly for those things most hunters wouldn't go after without backup, like demons. (She tells herself this isn't suicidally reckless. She just knows her limits and it's easy to exorcise a demon on her own. Digging up a grave, salting and burning a corpse and covering it again, all in one night and without getting caught, is damn near impossible to do alone for someone of her strength and stature. She can't quite convince herself.)

She doesn't hear from the Winchesters for months, hangs up on Bobby when he mentions them. But she keeps an eye on the news because the (second) death of Dean Winchester would most certainly be mentioned.

* * *

When Dean calls, frantic, to ask if she's seen Sam, she makes him tell her where he is and drops everything.

He calls again half an hour later to say that Sam called. She sends up a brief thanks, spares a moment to hope there won't be too many towns on her way, and floors it. It occurs to her, as she parks her car beside the Impala, that she never broke any traffic laws before she met Dean and Sam.

She isn't too bothered by the blood once it's been established that it isn't Sam's, but something about him makes her twitchy. She catches herself reaching for her gun a few times, keeps him in her line of sight as much as possible, and finds she can't quite pinpoint the feeling when Dean confronts her.

"Something's wrong," she tells him. "Something about Sam _feels_ wrong. I just can't place it," she adds, frustrated.

"Well," he says. "We'll just have to wait and see."

* * *

"I just don't understand how he managed to get the drop on both of us!" she says. Again. "There's no way he could have been that fast naturally."

"Wendy?"

"Yeah?"

"You've said that before. Three ties. Now please stop talking like a broken record and just… Focus on the road," says Dean.

He's sitting in the passenger seat of Wendy's stupid, ugly, huge, _yellow_ car, holding an ice pack to his jaw.

Wendy grumbles but doesn't say any more.

He shouldn't have called her. But fuck, Sam had been missing for a whole week, and Dean thought it was entirely possible that he and Wendy had teamed up and not bothered to tell him. _I'm an idiot_, he thinks now, watching her from behind the ice pack. _Maybe Sam wouldn't have bothered, if he was angry enough, but Wendy would have said something._

She's biting her lip, frowning in concentration. A few strands of hair have escaped her braid and are floating around her head like a dark cloud. He can see none of the darkness in her now, only worry and fear, so very similar to what he feels, and Dean is abruptly reminded that she once had a number of younger sisters.

The words slip out before he can stop them. "I've missed you, you know?"

She tenses. "I've missed you, too."

"Look," he begins, sighing, but she cuts him off.

"Why couldn't you just keep you mouth shut?" She slaps her palm against the steering wheel. "Dammit, Dean. You don't know me. You saw me at my worst and I owe you my life and my sanity, but you don't know me!"

He stares at her for a minute, ice pack forgotten in his hands. "Then tell me."

"Fine." But she doesn't continue.

Dean is just opening his mouth (to say what, he has no idea) when Wendy points at something ahead. "There."

Dean sees the bar first, the Impala in its parking lot second.

"Guess we'll talk later," he says, getting out of the car now.

She clicks off the safety on her gun and doesn't reply.

* * *

Jo is about to hurry off after Dean when Wendy catches her arm. "Let me go," she says, tugging. "I'm going after him."

Wendy smiles, knows it's ugly, doesn't care, and holds out a gun. "Surely you're not planning to go after a demon unarmed. Or without backup, like Dean, the idiot."

Jo smiles too, a lot less bloodthirsty. Takes the gun with one hand, Wendy's hand with the other. "Alright. Let's go save the day."

Wendy thinks this is a bit optimistic, but nods anyway, and together they set off to find Dean.

* * *

That one shot being fired makes her panic and if not for Jo she would have run out there, shouting and probably got herself killed.

When they find Dean by following that stupid ringtone of his, Wendy makes a mental to note to send the band a thank you card. Something along the lines of "Your song saved my friend's life and my sanity. But then, the two are kind of synonymous these days."

She doesn't help Jo patch him up because her hands are shaking too badly, but she let's Dean think she just wants him to suffer for his carelessness. He can see right through her, of course, and she knows it.

_You don't know me._ That's true, but he _does_ know how to see beneath all her masks, through her every act. The way he can read her makes her feel naked.

* * *

Demon-Sam hits her in the belly, and the pain is so intense, so terrifyingly familiar that she goes into a full-on flashback.

When she comes to, her throat feels raw and Dean is way too close for comfort. She tries to scramble away, bumps against the armrest of the couch. Dean hands her a glass of water and backs off.

"Thanks," she says, when her voice works again. Sam and Bobby are hovering in the background.

"So, what was that?" Dean asks after it's been silent for a while. The phone starts ringing in the other room and Bobby leaves.

"Flashback. Don't wanna talk about it."

"Right," he says. "Tell me anyway." And the tone is the exact same he used – a few hours ago? yesterday? – in the car. Then, she told him nothing. Vaguely, that ever-observant part of her is conscious that Sam has left the room.

"When it hit me, the demon, it felt like- God, the pain was so intense, it was like- like loosing Hanna all over again. I don't know how- It felt like being back there. Fuck, I could hear Alanna laughing-"

She doesn't even realize she's got her hands pressed to her belly until Dean very gently pushes them away. He splays one hand over her bellybutton. It looks huge, covers her belly from her ribs to the waistband of her pants. He doesn't say a single word. Somehow, it's the best thing he could have done.

* * *

They don't exactly travel together after that, but they're also never more than an hour's car ride away from one another, often less.

When Dean, Sam and Bobby are getting ready to gank a trickster, she's right there with them.

A while later, she feels sick with guilt, because while Sam was getting ready to kill his new werewolf girlfriend, Wendy spent a whole night having sex (great sex, with two different guys) for the first time in two and a half years.

She goes with them to Hollywood because, seriously, how can she not?

It proves to be completely worth it, just to watch the way Dean effortlessly fits into the role of a PA. He is actually _good_ at this, efficient, well organized, and it gives her a lot of food for thought. (Also, enough teasing material for the next freaking _century_.)

The night before they leave Dean takes her out to dinner, like a proper date. Well, sort of. The invitation consists of an address scrawled on motel stationary and "Wear something nice, won't you?"

She spends a very long time contemplating the only dress she owns, then puts it away and dresses in dark blue slacks with a matching blazer, a black blouse and black ballet flats. She already has the scrunchy wrapped around her wrist before she decides to leave her hair as it is.

The address turns out to be an actual restaurant, and Dean is waiting for her in one of the booths when she arrives. He looks different, wearing jeans like always, but these look brand new, and a light blue dress shirt and a thin black tie.

He gets up when he sees her and smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Wendy thinks he looks fucking _edible_.

"Wow," he says as they sit down. "You scrub up well."

She huffs out a breath. "You're not too bad yourself."

Dean makes a face at her, but doesn't get the chance to retaliate because a waiter appears with the menu and to ask what they would like to drink. Wendy and Dean share a long look over the wine selection, and order beer.

They pass the time until the food arrives with small talk and then they're quiet for a while, because for once Dean picked a restaurant that servers great food.

Wendy's half-way through her bowl of (thick, delicious, wish-I-had-the-recipe) tomato soup with rice before she asks, "Dean, what is this?"

He's considerate enough to swallow first. "Well, I think it's dinner."

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

He sighs. "Fine. This is me holding you to a promise. I'm going to get to know you." He reaches for his glass, takes a sip. "We're going to spend the evening together and we're going to talk. Prepare for lots of questions."

Wendy has no idea how to react, but Dean doesn't really give her the time anyway.

He swallows another bite of steak, washes it down with beer and asks, "So, what kind of music do you like?"

Wendy blinks at him. "Nothing specific, really. I mean, I don't really like a song unless I can enjoy the music _and_ the lyrics. Mostly, I just listen to whatever's on the radio." She grins suddenly. "I'll confess to a soft spot for the Beatles, ABBA and Celine Dion."

Across the table, Dean is shaking his head sadly. "You poor deprived woman. I'll have to get you some _good_ music for your next birthday." He's silent for a moment. "When is that again?"

It's Wendy's turn to shake her head. "February twenty-seventh. You never told me, when's _your_ birthday?"

"February? Damn, just missed my window of opportunity." He sips once more at his beer. "I was born January twenty-fourth. Late evening. Something like ten-thirty, dad said."

A few minutes pass in silence.

"What else do you want to know?" she asks. She finds that she wants him to know her. It's not just an easy way to shut him up now, this time the offer is sincere.

Dean grins at her. "Did you really read all those Nora Roberts novels we found on your bookshelves?"

For some reason, this makes her flush. "Yeah, I did. And I enjoyed them, too."

Dean's grin widens further. He is never going to stop teasing her for this.

* * *

They come back to the motel early.

Really, really early. Like, Sam is putting on shoes to go buy morning coffee kind of early.

He can hear them giggling and fumbling with the key, and for a minute he just sits there, on the edge of his bed, shoelaces untied, and listens. Because Wendy and Dean are giggling. _Dean _is _giggling_.

The door opens. Sam watches in astonishment as Dean picks Wendy up and carries her inside bridal-style, both still giggling. Dean makes it all the way to the space between the beds before toppling over. Onto his bed, luckily. They stop giggling on impact

"Are you guys drunk?" Sam asks into the silence.

This starts them up again.

Sam drags a hand over his face. "That's just… Yeah, perfect." He goes back to tying his shoes.

He looks up again when he realizes Wendy and Dean are once more silent. He's reluctant to raise his head because there's a huge chance that they're only quiet because their mouths are otherwise occupied. Then he laughs at himself, almost soundlessly, because there's no way he's going to risk waking them up now.

* * *

It's nice out, so after breakfast Sam finds a bookstore, browses for a good long while (no Dean to tell him to hurry the fuck up), and sits in the park for the next couple hours and looses himself in a Dan Brown novel.

The next time Sam checks his watch it's nearly six pm and his stomach is growling audibly. Sighing heavily, he puts the novel back into the bag with the other two books and heads back to the motel. He stops to buy two extra large cups of black coffee, and food for himself.

He finds Dean sitting at the table, head pillowed on his arms. The shower is running.

Sam puts down the coffee and takes a seat. The shower turns off. For a few minutes it's silent, except for the sound of Sam chewing.

The bathroom door opens and Wendy walks out, scrubbing at her hair with a towel, and she's naked. Sam looks down at his food. Then back up. She's wearing a new ring on her left hand.

Dean finally moves to reach for his coffee, mumbling something that Sam will assume means thank you. He's got a new ring too.

Sam drops the chopsticks. "Did you two get married last night?" he asks loudly, because the rings are identical (barring size, of course) and they're wearing them on the ring finger of the left hand. Wendy and Dean flinch, likely at the volume, and exchange a look.

"No," Wendy says. Sam let's out a breath of relief. "Not exactly." They exchange another look.

"We'll explain when we're not hung-over," Dean says. He takes his coffee to the bathroom with him. A minute later the shower turns on.

Wendy, dressed now, thank God, sits at the table beside Sam and reaches for her coffee.

"Does this mean you guys aren't fighting anymore?"

Wendy looks thoughtful. "I suppose. But I'm definitely keeping my car," she adds, almost as an afterthought.

Sam has to laugh. Maybe they're going to be okay.

* * *

**AN:** Whew! It's finally done.

This is the continuation of the fic I wrote to answer the question "What would make _me_ decide to go hunting monsters?"

It covers all episodes from 'Bloody Mary' in season 1 to 'Hollywood Babylon' in season 2.

I put my whole heart and soul into this story, even more than usual and I usually put a lot into my stories.

I gotta say, I didn't expect Wendy and Dean kissing until it happened. They kind of came alive in my head. The still are so, chances are, there will be more at some point. I have the scenes for 'All Hell Breaks Loose 1 & 2' in my head already, and I kind of _really_ want to Wendy to meet Castiel. That ought to be fun.

Anyway, if I continue this, it'll be a long while before I actually post anything.

Love, Annabeth


	3. Chapter 3

**Surviving Death**

The summer of 2008 is the worst time of Sam's life. The only comparison he has is an eternity of Tuesdays and six horrible months. But that wasn't real. It didn't happen for anyone but Sam, and it ended.

This will never end.

He distracts himself with Ruby and hunting and pretends he can't hear the phone whenever the caller ID shows Wendy.

He lies a lot. He lies to Ruby and to Bobby and to himself. (He doesn't lie to Wendy, but that's only because he doesn't talk to her at all.) Lies, lies, lies, lies, until he almost believes. Believes that he's fine that he's coping. Believes that Wendy's fine too, she'll heal, like she healed after whole family died, after she lost her baby. Believes that Bobby's fine, because he always is, because he can't not be fine. Believes that Ruby's fine, she's helping him, loves him maybe, saved him.

He does not allow Dean at the front of his mind, even as a fleeting thought.

Eventually, he stops feeling the pain. Stops feeling compassion and protectiveness and a ton of other stuff too, but he figures you've got to make sacrifices. Got to be prepared to ignore your conscience and your instincts, got to learn to kill the baddies in new and interesting ways, got to fucking watch your brother get torn to fucking shreds because he wouldn't let you stay dead.

Months later, in an abandoned church with Ruby, while Dean is trying to knock to door down, Sam is not remembering for the first time.

A few minutes later he's wishing Dean had just buried him, or cremated him, or fucking let him rot in abandoned house in an abandoned town because there isn't a single good thing that came out of Sam's life since he was fucking born.


	4. Chapter 4

**Reunion**

For Wendy, Dean's death is… Well, she can survive. She remembers a time when losing him would have killed her, but she's spent the past year getting used to the idea.

No, what bothers her, what sends her swinging between near-catatonic and cold rage is the thought of Dean in hell.

Dean was absolutely right. Out of all of them, John Winchester is the only one with actual experience in hell. She hates him for saying it, because John won't be alone in that for long and besides, Wendy's experiences come as close as possible without actually getting a full ride downstairs.

Wendy knows more about hell than she cares to think about. She knows that physical torture has nothing on a demon torturing a soul. She knows that time moves differently in hell. "A year for every day on earth," Alanna said once.

She knows how demons are made.

In her darker moods she just hopes she's long dead by the time Dean (or what used to be Dean) crawls out of the Pit.

On other days (though she can't say whether these are better or worse), when she's cheerful to the point of hysteria, she hopes that Dean will break soon, because at least then the world will end, and maybe Wendy (and, probably by default, Hanna) will actually make it into Heaven.

* * *

All through May, she tries to stay in contact with Sam, but he stops taking her calls or replying to text messages pretty fast. When she asks Bobby, he tells her he only hears from Sam when 'the idjit' is unable to find the information he needs on his own, which isn't nearly as often as Bobby would like.

* * *

In June she goes back to Oak Ridge.

She spends a day in her old house, just wandering around, touching things, looking at photographs. Remembering. She sits up in her room all night and when dawn begins to light the sky, she collects some things and leaves, heavy with a mixture of regret and relief.

* * *

In July Wendy breaks off contact with Bobby. Just turns her phone off and stashes it in the secret compartment with the weapons she no longer uses.

* * *

In August she writes him a letter to tell him she's alive and well, and settling down. She asks him not to contact her again.

She avoids looking at the new photograph lying on the table beside her left hand.

* * *

In November she cuts her hair, takes a knife into the bathroom and cuts off her braid. The next day she goes to nearest hairdresser and has him cut her nearly as short as Dean's.

* * *

They're not lying when they tell Sam that they didn't get married.

One reason is that they're both legally dead, and they don't want to get married using fake names.

Besides, it's not like either of them _wants_ to get married in the first place. They're fine the way they are. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

Instead they buy matching iron rings and have the jeweler engrave something on the inside. They never share that part with anyone else.

They don't even make promises or anything, except a drunken, "Let's never lie to each other."

At the time, it's enough.

* * *

The thing with Adam shakes Dean in ways he refuses to contemplate.

He's already out of sorts when they get the call, what with finding his life recorded in a series of books (the Winchester Gospels? Really?), but at Adam's funeral he finds himself fiercely missing Wendy.

He's avoided thinking about her this past year (has it really been that long?), and the Apocalypse and Hell and Sam and the Angels have been helpfully keeping him occupied.

He's already standing on her doorstep before it occurs to him that she probably doesn't know that he's back from the dead and, more importantly, still mostly himself (or at least not a demon). His hand hovers in front of the doorbell for a long moment as he wonders if it might not be better to just turn around and leave –

The door opens and a young woman wearing a baby sling nearly smacks into Dean.

Her eyes widen (so familiar) when she gets a good look at him, and she takes a step back and slams the door in his face. It takes him a moment to get past the very short and messy hair (not unlike Castiel's, he thinks and then wants to smack himself for this association) and lack of glasses, to realize that this is –

"Wendy?"

"What the fuck are you?"

"I'm me. Dean." He hears her growl ( full of fury and pain and grief) through the door and sighs. "Look, you can test me with holy water, silver, the whole shebang. At gunpoint if you'd like. Bobby did the same when I showed up at his place."

Silence. After a few minutes a silver knife pokes out through the mail slot. "Cut yourself on it."

Dean sighs again but reaches out to accept the knife. She doesn't let it go so, sighing once more, he presses his arm against it and moves just enough to open a shallow cut.

Apparently, it's enough. The knife disappears and there's a snick as the door unlocks. A moment later Wendy says, "You can come in now."

The door opens directly into the living room and there she is, keeping the couch as a barrier between them, the child still in its sling. She's got a gun trained on him.

"There's holy water in that glass," she says, jerking her chin toward the coffee table.

Dean reaches instead for the salt shaker and pours a bit into his palm, licks it off, chases it down with the holy water.

Then he flops down on the couch, ignoring the gun still trained on him because her face tells him that she isn't going to shoot him now, unless he gives her a damn good reason. And he has no intention of doing that.

"Why the fuck are you here?" she spits out at him, and then spends a minute shushing the kid.

He mentally runs through an assortment of different answers, all of them true, and rejects every one.

He shrugs, all casual, mostly because there's absolutely nothing casual about any of this. "I needed a bit of a break. I've had Heaven and Hell on my ass all year, and Sam…" He shakes his head. Not going there.

She waves his words away and he tries not to flinch because she's still got the gun in her waving hand. "No, I mean, why are you not in hell?"

He flinches again, visibly this time, and scowls. He's pretty sure she doesn't mean for it to sound so accusatory. He shrugs again, all casual. "Got pulled out by an angel." He'll show her the handprint later, when she's relaxed a bit. "Castiel. Dude wears a trenchcoat," he adds, laughter in his voice now.

There's a little snick as Wendy flicks the safety back on, and she puts the gun down on the coffee table and begins to pace with a sway in her step Dean has never seen before, not on her. It reminds him of someone, but he can't place the memory.

"So. Angels, huh?"

All the humor bleeds out of Dean. "Yeah. And they're a bunch of grade-A dicks, too."

"I get the feeling there's a story there," she says. "Why don't you catch me up on what's been happening while I do the weekend shopping."

He nods. "Sure." And follows her out the door, down the stairs, to her car. "You still driving this thing?"

"Well, I can't put a car-seat in there, so I don't drive much these days. And I haven't spent the night since… September, I think. Locked myself in because there was a ghost after me. The secretary from the police station. Nancy." Wendy shrugs, oblivious to the way Dean freezes. "She disappeared after a while. No idea why, but I'm not complaining." She rummages around in the glove box, then steps back and locks the car. "Here," she says, holding out her fist. "I think this belongs to you."

He closes his hand around the things she drops automatically, and uncurls his fingers to find a ring lying on his palm. Iron, with the engraving they never told Sam about. At least that explains why Sam didn't give it back.

* * *

Of course, Hanna chooses that exact moment to wake up and demand to be let out of the baby sling.

Wendy sees the startled look on Dean's face when he gets a proper look at Hanna, and gives him a tight smile.

"Wow, thought the kid would be smaller."

"Actually, she _is_ a bit small for her age. Probably because I chain-smoked my way through two thirds of the pregnancy."

"How old is she?"

Wendy doesn't look at him, sticks a pacifier in Hanna's mouth and walks around to the back of the car to get the stroller. "She was born on November second. More than a week past the due-date. Her name is Hanna Mary."

She watches out of the corner of her eye as he starts at the name, and then does some quick mental math, and sees the exact moment he reaches the correct conclusion.

"God, Wendy. Why didn't you tell me?"

She glares at him and moves around the stroller to start pushing it toward the convenience store down the street. "I didn't know. I got food poisoning in July and believe me, no one was more surprised to hear I was also pregnant. I was six months pregnant, and alone and sick, and then I went into withdrawal. And do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who'll rent to a jobless pregnant girl?"

Seems he's got nothing to say to that, so they walk in silence for a while.

"So, when did you get back anyway?"

"September 18," he says, with a calm that is obviously forced. "And the first thing Castiel told me was that he was an angel and I was supposed to prevent the apocalypse. It's not going so great."


	5. Chapter 5

**Declared Dead**

For the entire first day he ignores the child. He isn't ready to deal with that yet.

Instead, he finds himself caught up in how much Wendy has changed this past year. The lack of glasses is easy enough to get used to; he's seen her without them before.

The hair, almost as short as his now, is more difficult. His last clear memory of her is of the last night they spent alone together, before the hallucinations started. Her hair was free then; long long hair spread out beneath her, spilling over her shoulders, tangled round his fingers.

(She was already pregnant then, he thinks, and buries the thought quickly. Later.)

Her breasts are larger, he realizes as he watches her take off her jacket, which is still the one with the uncounted pockets.

(Milk. She's breastfeeding, he thinks, and ruthlessly buries this thought, too.)

Her name, too, is different. Jane Wendell. She made it out of the one her parents gave her. Jansen into Jane, Wendy into Wendell. Pretty clever, in his opinion.

(He wonders, involuntarily, what the kid's last name is, before he squashes that thought like the others.)

The last difference is more an absence than a change, and he doesn't even notice until evening, when the baby is asleep (don't think about it, don't fucking think) and they're sitting at the tiny table in the tiny kitchen, eating some kind of rice dish. He hasn't seen her smoke all day.

(He already knows when she stopped, but for the first time, he manages to catch the thought before it can fully form.)

He doesn't dream that night, for which he'd be decidedly grateful, if the cause wasn't an inability to sleep that has nothing to do with the baby waking up in the middle of the night.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean comes back from his week-long solo trip kind of shell-shocked, but Sam doesn't get the chance to drag it out of him before Castiel shows up in Dean's dream and everything goes sideways.

They're busy with Jimmy Novak and his family, and then Sam spends a few days going out of his mind while he's detoxing. And then, of course, there's the disaster with Ruby and Lilith and Lucifer.

He hates himself for it later, that he forgets.

* * *

Wendy doesn't see Dean again for another year.

(Although, a few weeks after he leaves a guy in a trench-coat appears suddenly in her living room and slams his palm into her chest. While she's still gasping for breath, he does the same thing to Hanna, who starts screaming. Then he says, "Lucifer walks free. I have made it impossible for you to be found by supernatural means," and disappears. Before she can panic enough to take Hanna to the hospital, she finds a letter on the table, addressed to her in Dean's handwriting, which tells her little more than Trench-coat guy, who turns out to be Castiel. Dean just uses more words.)

When he finally does show up, it takes Dean two weeks before he can bring himself to tell her why he came back alone.

After that, he disappears into a bottle and doesn't come out for a month.

* * *

He doesn't expect it (at this point, the only thing he expects is Wendy kicking him out), but when he thinks about it later, it isn't very surprising that it's Hanna who saves him.

He wakes up one day, already reaching for the bottle he didn't quite finish yesterday, to find her sitting on the floor in front of him. He pauses to squint at her and, apparently seeing that he's no longer asleep, she hands him a sheet of paper. He sits up to take a closer look.

"Hanna," she says, pointing at the smallest stick figure. "Mommy," she continues, pointing at a larger stick figure, which is holding hands with the first.

"Daddy," is larger than Hanna and Mommy, and he's crying.


End file.
